John Galliano Fall 2011: Then and Now

Fashionista contributor Long Nguyen is the co-founder/style director of Flaunt.
PARIS--The email invitation from the John Galliano’s office simply said that there would be a presentation between the hours of 5 and 6pm on Sunday afternoon at the posh Avenue Foch mansion. But fashion is always full of surprises, and upon arriving at said manor, the first floor along the corridors around the grand staircase was lined with café style tables and chairs. In the two main rooms were red velvet imperial style couches, marble statues, floral silk velvet cushions thrown here and there surrounded by potted flower plants, and several grand crystal chandeliers hanging low from the ceiling. Reduced in scale but not in temperament, Mr. Galliano would have been proud of the efforts his team has managed.

Fashionista contributor Long Nguyen is the co-founder/style director of Flaunt.

PARIS--The email invitation from the John Galliano’s office simply said that there would be a presentation between the hours of 5 and 6pm on Sunday afternoon at the posh Avenue Foch mansion. But fashion is always full of surprises, and upon arriving at said manor, the first floor along the corridors around the grand staircase was lined with café style tables and chairs. In the two main rooms were red velvet imperial style couches, marble statues, floral silk velvet cushions thrown here and there surrounded by potted flower plants, and several grand crystal chandeliers hanging low from the ceiling. Reduced in scale but not in temperament, Mr. Galliano would have been proud of the efforts his team has managed.

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With just 20 looks, the show was brief and the clothes were superb with a soundtrack of Adele and Coldplay. When the glass door lightly swung open, Karlie Kloss slowly walked out wearing a charcoal houndstooth jacket with fringed trims, a sparkling tweed belt at the waist, a black wool skirt split at the front and inserted with a silk satin panel and a wool top hat. Ms. Kloss stopped, posed with her left hand on her hip, walked again, then stopped and arched her back when a photographer behind me called out “This way Karlie.” The intimate presentation recalled some of Mr. Galliano’s ground-breaking shows in the past, especially the one where Linda Evangelista wore a similar wool gingham hourglass skirt suit and posed in the same manner as Ms. Kloss.

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The show starring Ms. Evangelista was among the first I ever attended as a magazine editor, along with the memorable October 2005 show where he employed a cast of obese, very tall, middle-aged, old age, and very short men and women alongside supermodels. It was a breathtaking moment that challenged fashion’s assumption of beauty and acceptance. Over the years, we all waited to see what the Galliano show invitations would look like--I remember a decorated navy wool silk shirt sleeve with show details written on the inside--and then we would prance around the set upon arriving at each venue, hoping to predict the mood and idea of the collection we were about to see.

But let’s get back to the fall clothes for a quick moment. A grey tweed flare coat over a lace and satin striped skirt, a boat neck double-breasted jacket with gathered sleeves and a black goat hair long skirt, and a purple chiffon short dress paired witha black latex trench were among the standouts of this very wearable collection. Then there were the classic Galliano slim dresses: a pink stripe embroidered with patchwork; a purple tulle with rectangular fabrics sewn on to create an origami pattern; a deep purple print with folds falling from the hips. To end it all was a light pink one-shoulder dress that when the model turned around was held together by dark pink silk ribbon tied into a bow. It was nothing short of the masterful craftsmanship and tailoring for which Mr. Galliano is known.

Whatever will happen in the near future and how this drama will play out, it would be surely and unduly sad if there is not a small place in the vast land of fashion where a niche designer brand (which is what I sense Galliano will become) can exist to bring the world a little bit beyond mere clothes. As I walked by the set of velvet furniture and table decorations piled upon each other on the way out of the show, I noticed several playing cards thrown randomly among the cushions and pots of flower. One of the cards, an Ace of Heart, had landed on top of an oriental carpet.

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Fashionista contributor Long Nguyen is the co-founder/style director of Flaunt.
PARIS--When the lights dimmed on this bright sunny Friday afternoon inside a black tent erected on the courtyard of the Musée Rodin, there wasn’t the customary loud music and a model already posed at the end of the runway ready for action. Instead, Sidney Toledano, the CEO of Christian Dior, came on the stage to give a speech in French.
With elegant but somber words that somehow felt more emotional in French than a translation would allow, Mr. Toledano summarized the “painful” events of the past few days that shook the fashion world in a rapid and unforeseen manner. As readers of this site are undoubtedly aware, Dior fired its designer John Galliano for anti-semetic remarks at a bar against a French couple and in an undated camera phone recording that surfaced last Monday in a London tabloid, sold for personal profit by an anonymous individual to the Sun tabloid.
“The heart of the house of Dior, which beats remain unseen, is made up of its team and studios, of its seamtresses and craftsmen, who work hard day after day, never counting the hours, and carrying on the values and vision of Monsieur Dior. Ce que vous allez voir maintenant, le résultat de leur immense travail. What you are seeing now, the result of their immense work.”
With these words, Mr. Toledano yielded the stage--a backdrop reproduction of the grey wall offices at the Avenue Montaigne headquarters--and Karlie Kloss emerged from behind the faux salon doors wearing a large brown cape draping over her cropped leather jacket, purple sweater, and midnight blue velvet pants neatly tucked into thigh high leather boots. Ms. Kloss led the show with her cape flowing in the air. This time her moves were tempered by the soft and un-melodramatic music, her make-up nude rather than painted like some figurines.
With 63 looks, the clothes certainly took center stage: there was Coco Rocha in a gray short sleeve double breasted flare jacket and a red print dress; Vlada Roslyakova in red tiered layers of ruffles; Lee Hye Jung in a khaki cotton layered dress; Iris Egbers in a sensible green plaid jacket over a short printed dress. Surely the men and women from the studios and ateliers who created these garments and who took a bow on stage at the end of the show should be proud of their accomplishments and their meticulous work in making these outfits.
Yet despite the dazzling choices of clothes, designer fashion requires an imaginative narrative without which even the most elaborately constructed garments are just mere clothes that in a few months’ time we will forget. Over his 14 years at Dior, Mr. Galliano provides us with that precise plot season after season, like a bedtime story taking us away from the utter banality and mundane business of fashion.

Fashionista contributor Long Nguyen is the co-founder/style director of Flaunt.
PARIS--When the lights dimmed inside the Couvent des Cordeliers in the heart of Paris’ university district, a shadow could be seen lurking towards the piano, covered with a large tan fox fur cashmere blanket. The shadow began playing a concerto while snow was dripping against the ray of a white spotlight at the end of the platform. From under the snow came an unshaven model wearing a dark grey washed leather coat with olive sleeves, a navy wool tweed coat, cotton shirt, and knit wool scarf each layered one upon another and belted at the waist. He also wore a charcoal wool twill pant, grey socks with open knit fringes and broken-in leather shoes. White snowflakes were scattered atop the model's black fox fur hat.
That was one version of the early twentieth century émigrés from Soviet Russia that John Galliano imagined and recreated for his fall show. Another look was a beefy charcoal wool coat with a fur lapel and gold trim worn by a Rasputin look-alike.
The collection was based on the life of the dashing ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, spanning from the revolution to his years of exile in London, as captured by the lens of photographer Irving Penn.

Fashionista contributor Long Nguyen is the co-founder/style director of Flaunt.
PARIS--“At the very beginning, knits were the bases of the concept, but since then, it has been about merging various types of categories, such as the trench, the bomber jacket, or the biker jacket, or a classic men's knit pull-over or cardigan sweatercombined with a skirt or a skirt and a cardigan and so forth,” said Chitose Abe following the second of her three mini shows this morning inside the courtyard of the Hotel d’Evreux. Ms. Abe, who established Sacai in 1999 after either years of working with Junya Watanabe at Comme des Garçons, has been presenting in Paris over the past few years. But it was her first time doing a small live presentation, with models wearing everything from a beige fringed knit and a brown short skirt, to a flared sleeve cable knit sweater with a sleeveless pull-over trench and a feather skirt, to an asymmetrical cable knit skirt with chiffon underlay and a sleeveless cotton tank and fur aviator collar.

Long Nguyen is the co-founder/style director of Flaunt.
PARIS--An explosion of green and blue lights--as well as a thunderous roar of music--signaled the start of the Dior fall couture show yesterday afternoon. Taking place inside a small tent at the garden of the Musée Rodin, the show officially opened Paris fall couture season. The streamlined stage décor--a simple sculpture by set designer Michael Howell, rather than a full on mise en scène like a maritime port or a tulip garden--was the first sign of a sharp break from the past.
Indeed, the house was staging its first couture show without longtime designer John Galliano. But that was not all that had changed.